RECAP – MEDIEVAL IDEAS! These are a medieval pictures of patients suffering from syphilis. What can you infer about ideas about disease and infection in this time?

What progress had been made by 1900? Vaccines Proper testing and experimenting Governments were beginning to take an interest in public health Previous knowledge and discoveries were built upon. A man called Joseph Lister (we will come back to him in our studies of surgery and anatomy) discovered a chemical called carbolic acid which killed germs in operations but it couldn’t be used inside the body. The search was on for a chemical that could find infection within the body and safely destroy it…… this magical chemical was nicknamed the silver bullet…..

Why a silver bullet. Make the links… Why a silver bullet? Make the links….. Werewolves are supposed to be caused by an infection that spreads through biting. A silver bullet will kill the infection and let the person return to normal!! They will live happily ever after! Hooray!

Who is today's hero…? … Paul Ehrlich! A German doctor who worked on Koch’s research team. He was fascinated by the fact the body produced antibodies to fight off infections. He called such antibodies silver bullets. They didn’t however kill all infections. Ehrlich wanted to find a synthetic chemical that would!

What was Syphilis? Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease caused by the spirochetal bacterium. Primary symptoms include a rash on the hands and feet and left untreated, syphilis can damage the heart, aorta, brain, eyes, and bones. In some cases it could infect the nervous system and deform the skull, these effects could be fatal. The first well-recorded European outbreak of what is now known as syphilis occurred in 1494 when it broke out among French troops besieging Naples . Today it can be cured with antibiotics

Ehrlich decided to test a variety of chemical compounds on the syphilis germ. His team tried 600 chemicals based on arsenic. None seemed to work.  Two years later in 1909 Sahachiro Hata, a Japanese bacteriologist joined the team. Hata retested some of the chemicals and found that compound 606 worked !  Q -Why had it been ignored? A – perhaps the first assistant was not so skilled?

Test, test and test again! Ehrlich was more important in the testing rather than the discovery of his magic bullet (Salvarsan 606) . He repeated the testing on hundreds of animals to get the dosage right. It was used on the first human patient in 1911.

OPPOSITION Painful! Would people become more promiscuous?